The girl tilted her head to the side, mouth popping open in curiosity, but Teo pulled Aina away.
“Come on. Don’t traumatize the poor girl,” he grunted, but smiled anyway.
“Live a little, Teo!”
7
It was a short walk out of the city with the setting sun at their backs as they followed Kouta and his entourage eastward. The path curved away from Rose Court, turning from cobblestone to dirt. She beckoned to Teo, and they both stepped behind trees that lined the path out of the city.
A carriage with two horses waited ahead. The guards’ voices were the only sound as they quickly confirmed with Kouta whether he would like to go anywhere else before heading home. He got in the carriage moments later, the carriage lurched forward, and she and Teo stepped through the trees, their footsteps in time with the sound of the wheels churning through mud.
At a safe distance, they followed the carriage across a bridge and through a dirt path enclosed by a small forest. The farther they walked, the less tainted the air became.
Soon, the carriage left the forest trail. Aina and Teo hid behind the trees at the fringe of the forest and watched the carriage approach the gate surrounding Amethyst Hill, the community where the rich stored their mansions and jewels. She’d heard enough stories of the people there to be disgusted by them. Last year, one of the women who lived here threw a bonfire party by burning all her out-of-season dresses, which had cost thousands of kors each.
She and Teo moved closer to get a better look, but managed to stay in the shadows of the trees. It was more of a wall than a gate, ten feet high, hewn of a pinkish stone inlaid with scattered brick that was supposed to look chic and accidental, but really just looked pretentious. Armed guards sat inside bulletproof enclosures at intervals along the wall, ready to open the giant iron gates for anyone with proper identification.
One of the guards pulled a lever from inside his glass enclosure, and it triggered the opening of the gates. The carriage rolled through at a slow pace.
“That’s when we can get past,” Aina said, pointing. “The other guard can’t see us from his position, and the guard facing us won’t be able to either. There’s a blind spot when the gate opens for a carriage to go through.”
Teo nodded, then pointed at a few willow trees lining the wall. “We can use that for cover too. We’ll have to move fast to keep up.”
They settled in to wait for another chance. In a few minutes, another carriage approached the gates, this one with white letters on the side declaring that it belonged to the Spennard Cleaning Company.
The guards opened the gate for the cleaning company’s carriage to make its way through. It rolled toward the gate, gravel crumbling beneath it, and blocked the guard’s view.
“Let’s go now,” Aina whispered.
Keeping low, she led the way toward the willow, with Teo behind her. Once they reached it, she stepped onto Teo’s cupped hands to push herself up the wall, then pulled him over as quickly as she could manage. His weight nearly knocked her off the narrow ledge, but she steadied herself and jumped down. She crouched and held her breath as she looked toward the glass enclosures with the guards. Their plan had worked; no one had seen them.
They ran swiftly behind the mansions. Before leaving the Dom earlier, Aina had asked the Fox, Mirran—Kohl’s best thief—where exactly Kouta’s mansion was in Amethyst Hill. Mirran knew the area well from past robberies of these mansions, and told Aina that Kouta lived in the northernmost one. As she and Teo made their way to it, she tried to conceal her disgust and jealousy at all the luxury surrounding her. Who in the world needed a three-story home as wide as a city block with a backyard as big as a forest? Lattice screens surrounded windows lit by electric light from within, while children starved in the streets a few miles away.
The sun had fully set by the time they reached the Hirai mansion. It was the largest one they’d seen yet, its gardens massive and perfectly maintained, the smooth white façade of the house sickening in its luxury. Maple trees lined the sides of the house like pretty soldiers, their leaves brushing against the cream walls. Servants waited at the front doors, somehow managing not to drop dead from the boredom of standing there all day. Only two people actually lived there, Kouta and his younger brother, Ryuu. She couldn’t fathom why they possibly needed so much space.
They’d arrived in time to watch Kouta, flanked by his bodyguards, approach the front doors. The servants bowed them inside, holding open the doors and then closing them tightly after Kouta and his guards entered. She and Teo waited behind the fence, searching for some way to enter the building without getting caught.
Long minutes passed. Guards stood in some of the windows and at the back entrance, all of them carrying guns. Her eyes scanned the trees, windows, and rooftops, trying to find a way that could be accessible to both of them. Teo couldn’t climb along a window ledge, and she couldn’t masquerade as a guard since the only ones she’d seen here were men as big and bulky as houses. Even if they did manage to get through a window, they had no way of knowing what the security was like inside.
Just then, the carriage from Spennard Cleaning Company rolled to a stop, hidden behind a copse of trees at the end of the pathway leading to the house. Aina’s eyes widened as she stared at the name of the cleaning company, and for once, she was grateful Kohl had forced her to learn how to read.
She tapped Teo’s shoulder and pointed. A man and a woman in the cleaning company’s uniforms stepped out of the carriage, carrying buckets of cleaning supplies, and approached the front doors. They waved their identification badges at the servants, who allowed them entry after a brief glance. Aina’s eyes narrowed at the pair’s uniforms as they passed through the wide doors.
“I have an idea,” she whispered to Teo. “We’ll need fake IDs.”
Teo nodded in agreement. “Shouldn’t take more than a couple days, you think?”
“I need to introduce you to more people,” she said with a laugh. Maybe it was the fresh air, or maybe it was the sense of being one step closer to all her goals, but right now she didn’t feel the need to hide her pride. “I’ll get them tomorrow. We’ll each be twenty-five thousand kors richer within a day, and I’ll get my tradehouse.”
8
“That looks nothing like me,” Aina said, shaking her head at the forty-something woman with light, short-cropped hair smiling up at her from the black-and-white identification photo. She tossed it back on the table in front of the man selling it to her.
He merely took the cigar out of his mouth and exhaled, the spiced scent filling the room along with a cloud of smoke. They were in a cramped closet in the the back of one of the tradehouses near the warehouse district, this one masquerading as a run-down bar. The loud voices of patrons, local workers loosening up after the day’s shift, drifted to them through the wooden slats.
“Look, that’s all I’ve got on short notice,” he said, another puff of smoke hitting her in the face as he breathed out. “If you want a better one, it’ll cost you.”
She had to fight the urge to laugh. Anyone from a tradehouse could go to another tradehouse and get discounts on services, but he was trying to play her. She was used to people underestimating her until she proved them wrong, and this would be no different.